More than you ever wanted to hear from Jenny Crusie

Month: March 2018

Today is Bunsen Burner Day. Before you scoff, how many of you have used a Bunsen Burner? That’s right, all of us who survived high school science.
We can thank Robert Bunsen for those nifty little torches, and I for one am grateful. Not the least because it also gave us this:

I’ve been on a Heyer binge the past two weeks, and I was surprised to find that I didn’t love all of the ones I read. I mentioned that to Krissie and she said, “Which ones?” and of course those turned out to be some of her faves because Krissie and I are Alpha and Omega (or as Krissie put it, she’s Pollyanna and I’m Medea). The only one we agreed on was The Grand Sophy, a book I loved so much I named my heroine in Welcome to Temptation after her. It still holds up after all these years, aside from a brief but nasty bit of anti-Semitism which the heroine does not commit (it’s the author’s narration, not Sophy’s thoughts, so I just skim past that part).

After that, Krissie and I parted company on most of our evaluations. So here’s what I think, with some Krissie quotes in there to provide a counterpoint;

I generally do not diss other living writers (once you’re dead, your ass is mine), but I’m going to break my rule and say that is just . . . bad. I won’t even use the “Lord, it wasn’t good” cartoon for this one. This is abysmal::

“Hence his life remains incessantly infused with her identity-infidelity, and her abhorrent ascensions to those constant salacious sessions of sexual solitaire she’d seen as self-regard.”

That’s on page 11. I think it means the male protagonist is upset that some female within his grasp is masturbating, but that’s just a guess. (More quotes at the link above.) I thought Penn had reached the bottom of my estimation when he said that film was too important to waste on entertainment. (Entertainment is the delivery system for ideas, you moron.) But this, this sinks him far below that. This isn’t just dumb pseudo-intellectualism, this is Bad Writing.

From now on, whenever I look in despair at some of my own Bad Writing, I can comfort myself with the knowledge that at least I’m not Sean Penn.

I’m working on shawls, but because I want them to be mindless so I can think, I get to the borders and stop. Borders take some concentration. This is why I currently have six shawls that are done except for their borders. The one I’m working on now is still in the repeat-the-same-row stage, and I’m loving it because it’s a great, simple pattern (ch multiple of 15 plus 10, break the yarn; ch 10, then repeat [5dc, skip 10ch/ch10] and break the yarn at the end of the row, repeat until you run out of yarn). And since the yarn I’m using is a crazy-colored cotton with lurex, I’m having a blast with it. It should take me through all the movies I want to watch this week (I’m studying super hero movies–Wonder Woman, Thor Ragnarok, Guardians, maybe Dr. Strange–because I want to), I should be able to work through the whole 800 yards just fine.

Finland has been named the happiest country in the world, followed by Norway, Iceland, Denmark, and Switzerland. (Sweden was 9th, in case you were wondering what happened to rest of the frosty North.) What do all those countries have that Americans don’t? Uh, gun laws, sane leaders, and socialism? Just guessing.

(The US was eighteenth, which is a freaking miracle considering the state of the nation.)

How were you happy this week? And were you in Finland while experiencing this?

I’m reading The History of Hell. Next up: Inventing Hell. If anybody ever looks at my Amazon buying history, they’re gonna get an exorcist. (I highly recommend the Dictionary of Demons if you’re looking for demon names, although they’re Euro-centric, so you’ll have to go farther afield for other cultures.)

The electric company has done the neighborhood the favor of giving us a head’s up that since another apocalyptic snowstorm is headed our way, we’ll probably lose power. In their defense, I chose to live in Upper Nowhere surrounded by trees that fall on power lines, and they’re doing the best they can. But boy howdy am I tired of this. OTOH, I have plenty of firewood, food that does not need to be heated to eat, lots of bottled water, and three small but warm-blooded dogs to keep me warm at night. I’m covered. And more to the point, so are you: I have Working Wednesday, Good Book Thursday, Cherry Saturday and Happiness Sunday all scheduled to post automatically. This is just to tell you that if you don’t see me participating, it’s because winter has once again kneecapped my internet. Grrrrr.

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About the Author

Jennifer Crusie is the New York Times, USA Today, and Publisher’s Weekly bestselling author of twenty novels, one book of literary criticism, miscellaneous articles, essays, novellas, and short stories, and the editor of three essay anthologies. She lives in a cottage in New Jersey surrounded by deer, bears, foxes, and dachshunds, where she often stares at the ceiling and counts her blessings.